From AT&T to Zuckerberg, these politicians, companies, and CEOs served up huge helpings of greed and arrogance this year

InfoWorld|Nov 24, 2010

Well it's Thanksgiving week, and what better time to talk turkey -- tech turkey, that is. As usual, the nearly ended year was stuffed with bad actors and bad ideas. Here are 10 players in the tech game who deserve to be (metaphorically) carved up and served with a bit of chutney and cranberries on the side.

1. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson: Nobody -- but nobody -- presides over a major company that has done more to make life miserable for tech consumers than Stephenson. AT&T's terrible wireless network makes the iPhone a doorstop for all too many users, and the company's constant promises that it will fix the network have long since grown hollow. Even worse, Stephenson and friends have the nerve to sell consumers a $150 mini cell phone tower that is supposed to make their AT&T cell phones do what they're supposed to do in the first place: work.

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2. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg : The Boy Billionaire is a close second to Stephenson, though maybe he should be first. Zuckerberg repeatedly allowed his company to leak personal data to third parties , and then apologized, over and over again. Despite having immense engineering resources, Facebook somehow can't find a way to create a simple consistent user interface that would regulate privacy choices. And as Facebook makes it way into business, IT is sure to have unending headaches .

: The Boy Billionaire is a close second to Stephenson, though maybe he should be first. Zuckerberg repeatedly allowed his company to leak personal data to third parties, and then apologized, over and over again. Despite having immense engineering resources, Facebook somehow can't find a way to create a simple consistent user interface that would regulate privacy choices. And as Facebook makes it way into business, IT is sure to have unending headaches.

3. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Why is so hard for Microsoft to develop a decent mobile OS? Maybe it's because Ballmer doesn't realize that it's already been done and his company is astonishingly late to market with the flawed Windows Phone 7. Ballmer's inability to move the company beyond the Windows/Office franchise has much to do with the stock's terrible performance.

4. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg and Google's Eric Schmidt: These two turkeys teamed up to try and convince the public, not to mention regulators and Congress, that the wireless Web should not be "restrained" by the principles of Net neutrality. Indeed, what the two companies and their pampered executives really mean is that the FCC and the states shouldn't regulate the wireless industry at all. Anyone who uses wireless technology know that we're being ripped off, and someone has to stop it.